A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

A brief recapitulation
on the ambiguity of the word ‘interculturality’ 118
For the modern State, the need to integrate or mix the indigenous populations
meant developing educational policies aimed at their integration
as one unique national project. The plans for educating the indigenous
peoples on the whole continent were based on the assumption that
Western and Christian education would transform them, eliminating their
‘defects’. The idea of education as a civilizing project for the indigenous
peoples can be traced back to colonization, and the native languages
played a vital role in this. After the conquest, the missionaries realized
that in order to Christianize the indigenous people, it was absolutely necessary
to learn their languages. This view, that native languages were
the best vehicle for Christianizing/civilizing/modernizing/ educating/developing,
is still prevalent today.
The struggle between modern States and the indigenous peoples and
their organizations is at the origin of interculturalism as an option for
schooling, as opposed to the integration project. In this sense, its origin
is linked to resistance to the educational projects that advocated bilingualism
and biculturalism as the only way to educate the indigenous
peoples. It gave importance to the indigenous languages, while at the
same time it denied the symbolic validity of cultural practices of any
other type. In subsequent discussions among the indigenous organizations,
it was said that while interculturalism claimed that schools recognized
the contemporaneity of the indigenous cultures, this recognition
was limited to the use of language. What the indigenous people wanted
was that forms of teaching/learning, their style and where they took
place should all be part of the educational process.
In other words, the decision to carry out intercultural education in State
educational projects was a response to the question of how to incorporate
educational methods particular to the indigenous cultures; but underlying
it were broader political implications about the validity and
118 This section is based on personal communication with Armando Muyolema
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